This invention relates to method and apparatus for using, recording and reading medical information and image information with digital audiotape and more particularly to medical information recording and reproducing which utilize a digital audiotape (DAT) unit to permit recording and reproduction of digital medical information and digital information representative of an examination image to and from a DAT.
Recently, advanced medical treatment and diagnosis techniques aided by an X-ray imaging unit, an X-ray computerized tomography (CT) unit, an ultrasonic diagnostic unit, a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) CT (?) and the like have permitted a patient to take a systematic diagnostic and therapeutic treatment. In addition, the number of medical facilities such as hospitals has increased and hence efficient and secure diagnostic and therapeutic treatments have been attempted by exchanging information about therapeutic history and medicative history of individual patients between medical facilities. Under the circumstances, applicability of an IC card based on an IC or an optical card writable with a laser beam to a medium for recording the information about therapeutic and medicative histories of individual patients has hitherto been studied. The IC card is the same type as a cash card used with banks and incorporates a central processing unit (CPU), a memory and an input/output circuit. The memory has a storage capacity which can amount to about 30 to 64 K bytes. The optical card resembles the cash card but information is optically recorded using a laser beam. The recording capacity can amount to about 500 K bytes to 2 megabytes. When used for recording character information, the IC card and the optical card can record 30,000 to 64,000 characters and 500,000 to 2,000,000 characters, respectively, and their capacity proves to be sufficient for recording therapeutic and medicative histories of a single patient.
With recent progress of image diagnostic techniques, images taken by the X-ray imaging unit, X-ray CT unit, ultrasonic diagnostic unit, MRI CT unit and the like play an important role in conducting diagnosis and therapy of patients. This raises the need of providing a record of information of various examination images as above in the therapeutic history of individual patients. However, when the image is digitized for recording, a very great amount of digital data is generated. For example, in performing 16-bit digitizing of an X-ray film of 40 cmxc3x9735 cm, about 8 megabits (1 megabytes) per image frame are needed. Therefore, the recording capacity of the IC card is insufficient to record the image. Even with the optical card, its recording capacity is insufficient to record a plurality of sheets of image.
Thus, the IC card and optical card are sufficient only for recording therapeutic and medicative histories of individual patients but because of their insufficient recording capacity, they fail to record, along with the histories, examination images taken by various units. Accordingly, in actually conducting diagnosis and therapy in hospitals and medical facilities, a personal medical history such as therapeutic and medicative histories of individual patients can be taken out of the IC card or optical card but examination images can not be supplied therefrom, with the result that it is necessary to get the examination image separately. Therefore, sufficient diagnostic information can not be obtained rapidly. Under the circumstances, a patient is sometimes prevented from undergoing efficient diagnosis and therapy. In addition, even if a diagnostic part has been imaged in the past, the same part will sometimes be examined to obtain a duplicative examination image, thereby imposing an unnecessary load on a patient.
An object of this invention is to provide a method and apparatus for using, recording and reading medical information and image information with a digital audiotape which can solve the above conventional problems by using recently developed DAT as a recording medium.
According to the invention, the method thereof includes the steps of fetching digital medical information supplied from an input unit and digital examination image information supplied externally, applying a predetermined data processing to the two types of digital information in a processor, recording and reproducing the digital medical information and digital examination image information supplied from the processor on and from a recording medium in the form of the digital audio tape (DAT), and reproducing and displaying an examination image recorded on the DAT.
In the medical information recording and reproducing method as described above, no audio signal is digitized for recording and reproduction on and from the DAT by a DAT unit but the DAT is used as a recording medium of large capacity which directly records digital data externally supplied, whereby both the digital medical information and examination image information of individual patients can be stored systematically on the DAT.